The invention relates to a method for selecting a shoe fitted to a foot and assemblies therefore.
The internet based order of footwear is a branch of business with fast increasing importance. Numerous online suppliers such as for example www.zalando.de or www.mirapodo.de offer a great selection of street, sports and child's shoes via their web portal, which can be ordered by selection of a desired brand and shoe shape as well as the corresponding shoe size. Since this internet shoe trade inevitably proceeds without trying on procedure, the selection of the correct fit is critical.
Usually, the information to the fit reduces to the specification of a shoe size, optionally in addition with attributes such as “narrow”, “normal” or “wide” foot shape. These specifications usually are not selective and highly different from shoe manufacturer to shoe manufacturer despite of numerous standardizations.
Thus, for example, an examination of the corpus.e AG, Stuttgart, on behalf of the sports magazine Motorpresse GmbH, with the aid of 3D foot scanners and a newly developed inner shoe shape scanner, has shown that despite of identically specified shoe size, the foot lengths between the models of different manufacturers already actually differ by up to 2 sizes (see magazines RoadBike April 2009, and Outdoor October 2009, Verlag Motorpresse Stuttgart).
This state has resulted in the specification of a shoe size not meaning a guarantee for good fit.
Therefore, the assistances offered by most of the online shoe shops for determining the correct shoe size also cannot lead to the goal, because only a correlation between the foot site determined more or less exactly by the customer and the associated standard shoe size is respectively established, and lacks the professional knowledge of the shoe salesperson (“these shoes are slightly small” or “they certainly are too wide for you”...).
To the assistances offered by the online shoe shops, there belong size tables, which translate the length measurement to be performed by the customer himself (heel to tip of the big toe) into a standard shoe size system, however, these tables only allow the translation of the foot length in millimeters into the standard shoe sizes according to EURO, UK or US standard.
Further, there are fit tables, which also consider the foot width and the calf circumference. U.S. Pat. No. 6,879,945 B1 of the company NIKE INC. discloses the use of printable foot sole templates, with which the customer can measure the required standard shoe size himself at home.
It is also remarkable that all of these current methods, which always only provide a standard shoe size anyway, are only based on the 2D image of the foot sole and e.g. do not consider the arch height.
The verification of the fit based on a comparison of the 3D foot shape of the customer with the 3D interior space of the potential shoe such as are performed by the Stuttgart company corpus.e AG with the aid of a 3D shoe interior space scanner completely lacks (see also: R. Massen, D. Rutschmann: inexpensive and calibration-free 3D digitalization of feet and shoe interior spaces. Orthopädie-Technik edition 9, 2009).
All of the current simple assistances that the online portals offer to their customers cannot solve two principal difficulties of the online shoe trade in satisfactory manner:
a) the customer cannot previously try on the ordered shoe
b) the dialogue with the trained sales personnel lacks.
As a result of the inconsistency of the shoe size specifications between the various manufacturers and the extensive restriction to linear dimensions, which only describe the footbed, it is very difficult for the online customer to reliably order the fitting shoes. Often, it is required to return the delivered shoes, a procedure that is associated with considerable costs for the online supplier and remains little satisfactory for the customer.
Therefore, it is not amazing that at present the online shoe business is characterized in that a great number of ordered shoes sent to the customer are again returned to the shoe retailer since the fit is not correct.
This return is extremely expensive since besides the pure transport costs, the returned shoes have to be unpacked, controlled for damage and again be input in storage in a personnel intensive way. All of the advantages of a widely automatically and electronically proceeding order process are thereby rendered void.
The Today's yields in the online shoe business are therefore still negative in the most portals. The actors on this market presently take this losses in order to be present in the Internet in time and to participate in the expected increasing online market in time.